Saudi Arabia Donates $100M To UN To Counter Terrorism

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud speaks before a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (not pictured) at his private residence in the Red Sea city of Jeddah June 27, 2014
reuters/Brendan Smialowski

Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, donated $100 million to the fledgling United Nations Counter Terrorism Centre, or UNCCT, to help the international body provide “the tools, technologies and methods to confront and eliminate the threat of terrorism,” Al Jazeera reported.

"Terrorism is a scourge and an evil that affects all of us," Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir reportedly said. “We believe that the United Nations can play a very strong and very effective role in mobilizing the efforts of the world to counter this evil.”

UNCCT, an advisory body that aims to provide training to, and share information and expertise with, member states -- was established in 2011 after a proposal to set up the organization was adopted in 2005 by 55 nations at a counter-terrorism conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, had, at the time provided $10 million as seed money for the organization.

Al-Jubeir reportedly said that there was an urgent need to tackle terrorist activities through “robust international measures.”

“Terrorism knows no religion. It knows no ethnicity. It has no nationality. It has no humanity. It has no compassion. It has no justice," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the donation and urged all U.N. member nations “to follow the example of Saudi Arabia by investing in the center’s efforts,” Associated Press reported.

He also said that the recent upsurge in terrorism in a number of countries, including the rise of the Islamic State, which was formerly known as ISIS, in Iraq, "underscores the challenge before us” and commended Saudi Arabia’s efforts toward providing humanitarian assistance to Iraqis in Islamic State-controlled territories.

The Saudi donation comes just a few months after Nouri al-Maliki, the former Iraqi prime minister, accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of providing funds and arms to the Islamic State and of leading an “open war against the Iraqi government.”

“These two countries are primarily responsible for the sectarian and terrorist and security crisis of Iraq,” Maliki had reportedly said in March.